I don’t try to offer my opinions regarding the theological questions of Catholicism. First I’m not a theologian, and I’m not Catholic. So why, pray tell, is Pope Benedict preaching to the world from his bully pulpit in Vatican City that global climate change resulting from human generated emissions of greenhouse gases has been “overhyped” by environmentalists?

The Pope condemns the climate change prophets of doom

Pope Benedict XVI has launched a surprise attack on climate change prophets of doom, warning them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology.

The leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics suggested that fears over man-made emissions melting the ice caps and causing a wave of unprecedented disasters were nothing more than scare-mongering.

The German-born Pontiff said that while some concerns may be valid it was vital that the international community based its policies on science rather than the dogma of the environmentalist movement.

The Pope’s asserted reasons for making these charges? His fear that concern for protecting plants and animals will override human priorities. Really, that’s what the report says. Maybe the Pope doesn’t realize that most people concerned about global warming are concerned about it precisely because of the effects it will have on human populations, from rising seas, more intense weather events, increasing drought, wildfires, famine, increased risks of wars fought over dwindling resources and an increase in human disease vectors which will all result from a warming planet.

The upshot? Global warming isn’t just a threat to plants and animals, it’s a direct threat to the survival of millions of people around the world, many of them among the poorest people on earth.

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Of the 443,000 people killed and 2.5 billion affected by weather-related incidents in the last 10 years more than 98 per cent of them came from developing countries.

The figures are revealed in a new report Climate of Disaster issued by the Tearfund, one of the leading relief and development agencies.

That’s just what has happened in the last ten years. It is estimated that currently 150,000 deaths and 5 million cases of illness per year world wide are attributable to global warming. Estimates of future human suffering stagger the imagination regarding the number of those who are predicted to die, or suffer from homelessness, disease, malnutrition, etc. as a result of climate change fueled by global warming. In Africa alone it is estimated that diseases spread by the effects of global warming may kill 185 million people by 2050. Worldwide, a warming climate could create 1 billion migrants fleeing the effects of global warming in their homelands by 2050.

These are effects on human populations, not birds, or bees or spotted owls or krill or trees. Human beings, the same people whose lives the Catholic Church places such a priority upon. For the Pope to issue this statement at this time is tantamount to a reckless disregard and indifference to the fate of the billions of people who will suffer because their planet Earth, home to all humankind, is reeling from the effects of human generated warming far faster than previous climate models had predicted:

As reported in yesterday’s edition of The Independent, a series of stunning and worrisome studies has just shown that global warming is accelerating three times more rapidly than initially feared. The rate of increase of greenhouse gas emissions has tripled since the 1990s, the Arctic ice caps are melting three times as fast, and the oceans are rising twice as fast as had been originally forecast.

The study authored by Michael Raupach of the Global Carbon Project at CSIRO and a team of international scientists concluded that carbon dioxide emissions “have been accelerating at a global scale, with their growth rate increasing from 1.1% y-1 for 1990-1999 to >3% y-1 for 2000-2004.” Furthermore, they determined that the growth rate in emissions experienced its fastest and largest increase in rapidly developing economies such as China’s (accounting for “80% of the world’s population”), which together contributed to “73% of global emissions growth in 2004 but only 41% of global emissions and only 23% of global cumulative emissions since the mid-18th century.” This indicates, however, that developed countries, while only accounting for less than a sixth of the world’s population, still produce over two-thirds of total greenhouse gas emissions.

This dramatic increase is much faster than even the worst-case scenario put forth by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in last year’s report and casts a bleak outlook on the group’s already dire predictions of dwindling water supplies, poor harvests, melting ice and loss of biodiversity.

Another study conducted by the University of California’s National Snow and Ice Data Center showed that the Arctic ice had decreased by 7.8% a decade over the past 50 years. This again was in sharp contrast to IPCC computer models, which estimated the loss in ice cover at approximately 2.5% a decade.

To call the Pope an ignoramus and fool in his assessment of the science of global climate change is to be generous. Perhaps he’s concerned about the Catholic Church’s economic interests, or perhaps his peculiar and wrongheaded remarks are a throwback to the attitudes of those churchmen who suppressed scientific inquiry in the Middle Ages because it disagreed with eatablished Church doctrine. Whatever his reasons are, however, the evidence already exists that he is dead wrong. If anything, the scientists studying the effects of climate change have not been alarming enough in their pronouncements regarding the dangers we all face. The same day this report on The Pope’s misguided remarks was published comes news that 2005 is shaping up to be the second hottest year in recorded human history, despite the fact that there is no El Nino operating to warm the waters of the Pacific, and solar activity is lower than it has been in a decade.

According to NASA scientists:

Through the first 11 months, 2007 is the second warmest year in the period of instrumental data, behind the record warmth of 2005, in the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) analysis. The unusual warmth in 2007 is noteworthy because it occurs at a time when solar irradiance is at a minimum and the equatorial Pacific Ocean has entered the cool phase of its natural El Niño — La Niña cycle. {Caution: pdf file} […]

The six warmest years in the GISS record have all occurred since 1998, and the 15 warmest years in the record have all occurred since 1988. […]

The natural variations of the Southern Oscillation and the solar cycle thus have minor but not entirely insignificant effects on year-to-year temperature change. Given that both of these natural effects were in their cool phases in 2007, it makes the unusual warmth this year all the more notable. It also suggests that, barring the unlikely event of a large volcanic eruption, a record global temperature exceeding that of 2005 can be expected within the next 2-3 years.

A word of advice Pope Benedict. Stick to what you know, and STFU about anything to do with the science of climate change. Your voice is both unwelcome, and your opinions regarding the danger we all face as members of the human race is deeply and seriously flawed by your obvious ignorance regarding these matters. Tell you what: we’ll leave matters of Catholic dogma and doctrine to you and your many Cardinals, Bishops and Priests. You should leave matters regarding the science of global warming and its effects to — well, to the scientists who actually study climate change.